Alright, I confess, that was a terrible attempt at alliteration actually. However, to get to the point, Chris Gee over at the Prepared Mind has done a far better job of covering ReBrand 2007 judging this past week in Rhode Island than I ever could have. So here’s his site, must read the first post about how human beings make judgements and where design fits into all of this.

My impressions of this week are fuzzy at best, I get a whole brain picture rather than the kind of analysis that Chris was able to do so well. So I’m glad I’d decided not to blog it. Instead, I must say that meeting the Provost and the President of the Rhode Island School of Design and being kissed good night was most flattering 🙂 I can’t even begin to articulate just how impressed I was by Roger Mandle the President [of RISD]. He was so charming and well spoken and seemed to embody the epitome of a right brain thinker that I was truly bowled over.

To continue the thought, the next day I was seated at dinner next to someone who introduced himself as a longtime subscriber. He told me he had my RSS feed straight in his Google window. I’d mention his name but I am not sure whether he’d want to be mentioned or not since he’s confessed to lurking, not commenting. I’m hoping this lures him out to comment since reading his bio linked to someone above impressed me so much that I can’t believe people like him read people like me.

Whoa… Is this the first of many blogshocks in the real world?

But I promised Allan Tear, there I said it, that I’d blog this meeting since we discovered a very unusual pattern. Allan studied engineering for four years in Pittsburgh at CMU and then worked for four years in Bangalore. I, on the other hand, had spent four years studying engineering in Bangalore at BMSCE and worked for four years in Pittsburgh. Its really a small world, people, even in meatspace, since niblettes lived a block from me at the same time in Pittsburgh but we met on my blog instead, ha!

We met an absolutely wonderful group of people, it was a lot like Overlap, except for the balance of folks being more visual right brain thinkers as would be expected. And who can deny the learning experience of sharing global branding strategy thoughts over beer with those who have actually done it, not just written about it like I only do. Rule #1 in my book, is acknowledge that you don’t know everything about everything and let the experts do their job. How do you define an expert in some field? Good question, and after meeting such an eclectic mix of them this week, I’m guessing that the answer might be that an expert is someone who feels passionately enough to fight for the principles used in that field, the methods and processes, and so will ensure that the project is executed with quality, if not finesse since it would be their pride and joy to undertake.